1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of sports entertainment, and in particular to the monitoring of football pressure by game officials and spectators.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In 2015 the New England Patriots won the AFC Championship and headed to the Super Bowl. A controversy arose when some of the 12 American-style footballs that the Patriots used were judged to be 2 psi below the league's pressure requirement on game balls. There clearly exists a need for the pressures of footballs to be monitored before and during games by one or more game officials. Furthermore, in order to dispel any perceived favoritism by the officials for one team over the other, and to restore confidence in the administration of the game, it would be useful for the game's spectators to be able to simultaneously monitor the football pressures as well, both before and during the games. It would be useful for the football pressures to be monitored by a system enabling both game officials and spectators alike to monitor the football pressure while the footballs are on the sidelines waiting to go into play. In order to enable the system to monitor the pressure of more than one football at a time, it would be useful for the system to be scalable. In order for the pressure of more than one football to be monitored simultaneously by both game officials and spectators alike, it would be useful for the system to enable the game officials and spectators to monitor the football pressures remotely.
Examples of the prior art are: U.S. Pat. No. 9,084,076 (Breed), U.S. Pat. No. 9,082,418 (Ong), U.S. Pat. No. 9,080,983 (Galliher), U.S. Pat. No. 9,089,740 (Frank), U.S. Pat. No. 9,066,558 (Molyneux), U.S. Pat. No. 8,870,690 (Krysiak), U.S. Pat. No. 8,758,172 (Creguer), and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/182,810 (Thurman), Ser. No. 15/157,900 (Holthouse), Ser. No. 15/126,313 (HUSSAIN), Ser. No. 15/057,775 (Dong), Ser. No. 15/150,459 (Werahera), Ser. No. 15/148,141 (Thompson), Ser. No. 14/332,160 (Berggren), Ser. No. 14/221,137 (Krysiak), Ser. No. 14/179,469 (Berggren), Ser. No. 14/024,483 (Bevier),
In the prior art, the football pressure is measured with an air pressure gauge. The stem of the air pressure gauge is poked into the football's air valve. Operating the football's air valve can inadvertently cause pressurized air to be lost during this measurement process, thereby reducing the football's pressure. Therefore it would be useful to measure the football's pressure using a system that did not use the football's air valve. In addition, it would be useful for the system to provide some measure of redundancy or backup in the event that some part of the system fails.